Prior to urban development, Lake Alice in Fergus Falls supported a diverse array of vegetation and wildlife. Presently, stormwater enters the lake at the heart of the city through two major storm sewers, resulting in excessive phosphorus, sediment loading, cyanobacteria, and fecal coliform in receiving waters. This project, to be performed by the City of Fergus Falls in FY25, will remove the primary source of phosphorus and total suspended solids through the addition of sediment traps and updated catch basins in the stormwater system flow.
MNDNR's St. Louis River Restoration Initiative (SLRRI) is a collaborative program enhancing and restoring the St. Louis River estuary. This 12,000 acre estuary is a unique resource of statewide significance. SLRRI's vision for the estuary includes diverse, productive, and healthy aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems of the river and watershed. MNDNR and MN Land Trust's SLRRI Phase 8 will restore an additional 155 acres of priority aquatic, wetland, and forested habitat for important fish, game, and SGCN.
The Lower Mississippi River Habitat Restoration Partnership is a long-term effort to restore habitat connectivity and improve water quality in critical areas along the Mississippi River corridor from the Twin Cities to the Iowa border by reconnecting tributaries to their floodplains, revitalizing backwaters and channels, and protecting and restoring floodplain forests, wetlands, and prairies that are essential to sustaining the incredible diversity of plants, animals, and human uses provided by this great river.
This program will continue our conservation partnership into Phase 8 and will continue to protect and restore diverse prairie and wetland habitat in areas that adjoin existing DNR WMA. Parcels are identified with representatives of local government, Windom Area MN DNR, Ducks Unlimited (DU), The Conservation Fund (TCF), the Fox Lake Conservation League, Inc (FLCL), and other local partners. Wetland restoration and additional grasslands are needed to make our WMA habitats resilient.
The Minnesota Deer Hunters Association (MDHA), in collaboration with county, state, federal, tribal, university and non-governmental organizational (NGO) partners, seeks to continue the successful work of the Moose Habitat Collaborative (Collaborative) by improving nearly 10,000 acres of foraging habitat for moose in northeast Minnesota. The project builds on the Collaborative’s previous efforts to enhance forest habitat by increasing stand complexity and production while maintaining thermal components of the landscape with variable enhancement methods.
We propose a programmatic approach to achieve prioritized aquatic habitat protection for trout streams in Minnesota, with an emphasis on Southeast and Northeast Minnesota. We propose to protect 3.75 miles of trout streams, including approximately 75 acres with permanent conservation easements on private land. Protected lands will be designated as Aquatic Management Areas (AMA's) administered by the Minnesota
DNR Division of Fish and Wildlife.
Phase 3 of the PCHP sought to acquire parcels as State Wildlife Management Areas or Waterfowl Production Areas in the Southern Red River Valley. Over the course of the appropriation, we acquired one 64.1 acre tract as a waterfowl production area and two tracts totaling 555.7 acres as wildlife management areas. Upland prairie and wetland habitat were restored on all tracts to provide the highest quality wildlife habitat possible.
In phase V of this program, we purchased two properties totaling 1,076 acres, which exceeds our acre goal by 408 acres. The Prosby addition to the Cupido WMA in Norman County was 955 acres, and the Lehrke addition to the Parke WPA in Clay County was 121 acres. Upon purchase, we restored the uplands and wetlands to the fullest extent possible. Both tracts have been transferred to either the MN DNR or USFWS.
This program will bring focused conservation to one of Minnesota's priority aquatic resources, Lakes of Outstanding Biological Significance. These threatened lakes possess outstanding fisheries and provide habitat for a variety of SGCN; yet, at present, no habitat protection program specifically targets these priority resources. Through this proposal, the Minnesota Land Trust will protect through perpetual conservation easements 1/2 mile of shoreland and 216 acres of habitat associated with the top 10% of these lakes in northeast and northcentral Minnesota.
Using the Reinvest in Minnesota (RIM) program, this project addresses the potential loss of grassland habitats from conversion to cropland and accelerates grassland protection efforts not covered by other programs. Working in coordination with established Prairie Conservation Plan Local Technical Teams (LTTs), this proposal will enroll 830 RIM acres (approximately 10 easements), focusing on Minnesota Prairie Plan-identified landscapes.
